Google Maps scraper: the four ways to get the data, compared

Google Maps holds a listing for most trading firms on earth. Each listing is a small public profile the firm can edit.

A scraper reads many of those listings and writes them out as a table. The whole job, in one line.

People want this for four reasons. Sales lists. Market sizing. Local SEO audits. Store or site location planning.

What the tools do not give you

A Maps listing has no employee count, no revenue and no named owner. So no Maps scraper can hand you those.

An email is not a Maps field either. Tools that return one found it on the firm website, not on the listing.

Anyone promising you a decision-maker name from Maps is selling you a second product. Ask which one.

This is the cheapest and fastest route. Free tiers are normal. Install, search, press a button.

What it is good at

• A few hundred rows in one city, today, for almost nothing
• Working from a search you already ran and trust
• Testing whether a niche is worth any further work

What it cannot do

A single Maps search stops feeding results after a couple of hundred rows. The extension can only read what Maps drew.

The work runs on your machine and your IP. Your browser has to stay open for the whole job.

A page reader breaks when Google changes the page. Every tool in this class has had that week.

Two overlapping searches give you two files with the same firms in both. Merging them is your problem.

Platforms in this class run scrapers for many sites, not only Maps. You set filters or paste URLs, then pick a run schedule.

What it is good at

• Repeat runs on a schedule you control, down to the hour
• Parallel runs, so a big job finishes without your laptop
• Delivery straight to Google Sheets, S3, SFTP or a webhook
• One platform across Maps and half a dozen other sites

What it costs you

You pay per result, so you find out the size of a job by running it.

You own the config. A category, a country and a post code list are yours to build and maintain.

Results sit on their servers for a set window. Retention windows in this class run from about a week to about a month, so download what you keep.

Fields differ per scraper, so your file shape can change under you when a vendor ships an update.

You call the API, you pass a field mask, and Google bills you per request. Their docs group fields into Essentials, Pro and Enterprise tiers.

Mixing tiers matters. Ask for fields in both the Essentials and the Pro tiers, and Google bills the whole call at the Pro rate.

What it is good at

• Data straight from the source, with no page reading in the middle
• A clean contract and support you can call
• Perfect fit for a product that looks up one place at a time

The two things that stop most list builders

First, the terms. Google says you must not pre-fetch, cache or store Places content. A few narrow exceptions apply. Place IDs are one: you may keep those without a time limit.

That rules out the thing a list buyer wants, which is a file they keep. Read the Maps Platform terms yourself before you plan around this.

Second, there is no email. The Places API does not carry a contact address, and an email is what most outreach lists are for.

So who should use it

Build a product that shows a user a place, and the API is the right call.

Build a sales list you plan to keep and re-use, and the API is the wrong shape for the job.

The difference is when the work happens. A crawler works when you press go. An index has already done the work.

So you can filter and count before you spend anything. You see 605 plumbers in Norway, and 262 of them with no website, before you export a row.

What you get from the shape

• A count on screen, so you can size a market with no run
• Dedup across every search, because the store holds one row per firm
• Filters before the export, not a clean-up after it
• A first-seen date on each row, so you can tell new firms from old
• A schema that stays still, so your CRM import keeps working

What you give up

Freshness on demand. An index is as current as its last crawl of that area.

Coverage. An index only holds what its owner has crawled. Ask which countries are real before you buy.

Control. You cannot point it at a street and a minute the way a crawler can.

Here is the test. Open the file and see whether you could start calling from it today, with no other tool.

• Name, full address split into street, post code, city and region
• Phone in national and international form, plus the line type
• Website, and the root domain on its own, for matching later
• Email, plus the page it came from, so you can check the working
• Role inboxes: contact, sales, finance and administration
• Rating, review count and whether the firm has claimed the listing
• Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, X and TikTok links
• Opening hours, price level and the full Maps category tree
• A closed-for-good flag, and a first-seen date on the row

The four fields people forget to ask for

Line type. A mobile number and a switchboard need different scripts.

The source page for the email. Without it you cannot audit a bad address.

The closed-for-good flag. A file full of dead firms wastes a week of calls.

The first-seen date. It is the only way to tell a new firm from one you already worked.

Two questions to ask any vendor

Does the column set change between exports? If it does, your CRM import map breaks every month.

Does the file stay mine after I cancel? Some tools take the export away with the plan. Read the terms.

The data is public business data

A firm puts up its own Maps listing for the public to read. A company name, a trading address and a switchboard number are business facts.

A personal name in a role inbox is a different thing. Treat that as personal data and hold it to the same rules as any other contact record.

GDPR and B2B contact

In the EU and the EEA, cold B2B email runs on legitimate interest, not consent. That is a real legal basis and it comes with duties.

You must name yourself and your company. You must say where you got the address. You must offer an opt-out in the first message and honour it.

You must also keep the message relevant to the business you are writing to. A pitch that could go to anyone is a weak legitimate interest case.

National rules layer on top. Some countries treat sole traders as individuals. Check your own market and take advice if the programme is large.

Terms of service

Every service has terms, and Google Maps is no exception. We will not tell you to break them.

If you use the official Places API, follow its rules on caching and storage. Google says you may keep place IDs without a time limit.

The rest of the Places content works the other way. Google says you must not pre-fetch, cache or store it, outside a few narrow exceptions.

If you use a hosted tool, the vendor is the party operating against those terms, and that is part of what you pay them for. Read their terms too.

A suppression list is not optional

Someone will ask you to stop. Record it, honour it, and make sure it survives your next export.

A per-account suppression list is the mechanism. A domain in it should never appear in a later file, whoever on your team runs the search.

1. A few hundred rows in one city, once Use a browser extension. It costs almost nothing and it will do the job today.
2. A feed you keep fresh across several sites Use a cloud crawler. Schedules, parallel runs and webhooks are what that class is for.
3. A product that looks up one place at a time Use the official Places API. It is the only route with no terms argument, and it has no email.
4. A market you plan to work for months Use a maintained index. Count first, filter first, and keep the schema still.

That last line is us. FindAndClose holds Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland today, with 64 columns on every plan.

We do not claim global coverage, because we do not have it. Google Maps is our only live source. Apple Maps and Bing Maps are on the roadmap and are not shipping.

If a different route fits your job better, take it. A list you cannot work is worse than no list.